


A Portrait of Sleep

by merrymaverick



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Dreams and Nightmares, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:01:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28054314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merrymaverick/pseuds/merrymaverick
Summary: The Hargreeves don't tend to sleep at the right hours, and when they do, it isn't well. Vignettes on the way in which the seven each sleep (or don't sleep) and some confrontation on healthy sleeping habits.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 30





	1. Chapter 1

_One._

Luther sleeps on his back, mouth slightly open, arms hugging his chest. He snores as a result, of course, but ever since his accident his shoulders have simply been too broad to realistically sleep on. Besides, he likes the sound of his own snores, in that weird way that people seem to like the smell of their own farts. Not only that, but in the silence of the big empty house, then the silence of the moon, it’s comforting to be reminded of your own existence. Evidence of life, even in unconsciousness.

He sleeps like clockwork, every night. Remnants of a schedule that once defined him in relation to a man who couldn’t care less. But still, in a way, he likes it. It’s reassuring, constant, there. He will get tired at eleven o’clock on the dot, and falls into bed each night at midnight, only to rise seven hours later. Technically, he knows he should probably sleep longer - he wants to sleep longer, every time. But by keeping himself just below board sleep comes easy, and dreamless. He wouldn’t give that up for anything.

_Two._

Naturally, Diego is inclined to sleep all curled up.

_Like a baby._

But he’s trained himself out of it, mostly. Besides, he’s a little too big and a little too sore most nights to bring his knees all the way up to his chest. Instead, he sleeps on his side, knees still bent, one hand under his jaw, strangely reminiscent of the clinical recovery position. He learnt long ago that it was easier to convince himself that he still had breath in his lungs if he can feel his chest push at his palm as it rises and falls. And when he wakes from dreams filled with an endless chase, rising waters and still, occasionally, re-enactments of Umbrella Academy superhero outings, he can jerk awake with a hand reminding him of the pulse that means he is alive, that he survived, that he will do again.

_Three._

Allison doesn’t sleep a lot. Less than almost all of her siblings, with the notable exception of Five, and possibly Diego, although it’s hard to tell with the odd hours they keep. Certainly less than is recommended by the U.S. Association of Physicians.

When she was younger, it wasn’t so much of a problem. Under Reginald’s schedule, bedtimes were set early and strictly enforced, and the days jam-packed enough to eliminate any complaints. Now though, with work being so irregular, changing start times, night shoots, press tours, and then breaks of nothing for _months_ , it was hard to keep track of her days, let alone fit enough time to sleep. And then, when there is time, restlessness seems to infect her very cells, regardless of her tiredness, and she whiles the night away each time, pacing and planning, stress building until exhaustion takes her, finally, to dreamless sleep.

When she wakes, she finds her arms have reached in front of her during the night, grasping at nothing but empty sheets.

_Four._

It depends on the night. Used to depend on the high. Still absolutely depends on the where. Klaus likes sleep, likes the freedom of it. A little taste of death, of unconsciousness that heals rather than hurts. He doesn’t dream much anymore - wonders if that’s a problem, usually decides it’s not - and so wakes in the same place he drifted off, or passed out. If he’s inside, and warm, he’ll be sprawled out, limbs akimbo, marking territory in a way he never seems to do whilst awake. If he’s outside, which he isn’t so much anymore, he’ll curl up, albeit gracelessly, elbows poking into his hips, legs pulled close and entwined with one another. Anything, no matter how uncomfortable, to keep the heat in.

It’s much nicer to sleep inside.

_Five._

It seems wrong to sleep on a bed, even after all his time spent working with the commission, with their health benefits and motel rooms. Some part of him still only seems to remember the hard, unyielding bedroom that was his for so many years, only rocks and rubble and dead things, only what was strong enough, uncomfortable enough, to withstand the worst. A mattress is impossibly soft, almost swallowing him whole in a way that his brain reminds him can only be dangerous.

When Five does sleep, he sleeps small, as small as he can, shoulders hunched high and fingers under arms. He dreams a lot still, dreams of confused rooms and ruined futures, of dying people and demons that refuse to catch his eye. He doesn’t know if he snores when he sleeps, or if his nightmares make him talk, or worse. Delores never told him, and he never slept near anyone else. His siblings have yet to say anything, but the way Diego looks at him sometimes makes him think that maybe he isn’t as quiet as he should be. Nothing’s been said quite yet, but he’s heard enough panicked gasps from Diego’s room to piece together the strange affiliation they seem to have. But then, he supposes, none of them sleep easy compared to the rest of the world anyway.

_Seven._

Vanya hasn’t stayed in her childhood bedroom since she was eighteen. That’s not unusual, not beyond the realm of ordinary she knows so well. Many kids leave home and don’t come back, many more have parents that move on, redecorate, adapt to life without them. They don’t have a time capsule of their teenage self to come back to, because they had a chance to pack themselves up and move on.

It’s odd, mostly unsettling, to be near rooms that were once a whole world and now are but a tiny part of it. And when she takes to the bedroom, that much smaller than her siblings (thanks, Dad, for that reminder), she is stubborn in her dreamless sleep. She takes up the bed, sensible but mobile, tossing back and forth in the smaller hours. When she wakes, it’s because she wants coffee, or the bathroom, or just because she’s ready. No bell to interrupt her, no schedule to keep. Sleep isn’t the escape it once was, the way it was when they were kids, when every part of her was determined by her family. Now, it is no more than a way to keep her level, keep her steady. She likes it better that way.


	2. Ben

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben doesn't sleep, but he almost prefers it this way.

He doesn’t miss sleeping. If anything, it’s one thing that makes the harsh reality of being apart from the living almost bearable. When he did sleep, it was always some version of uncomfortable. He dreamed a lot, heavy, darkened dreams. Not nightmares, not entirely - oppressive, but not scary, not explicitly. He had talked to Dad about it, (although it was more like reporting, as though to a doctor, one’s symptoms. ‘Hi, yes, so my dreams feel as though someone is enveloping me? And it’s more like many someones, like a lot of things tightening their grip on me somehow. Is there a pill I can take for that?’) and after a week or so a theory was born.

_‘Number Six! Your creatures are communicating with you through your sleep. You must communicate back! I want a report each morning until you have created a sufficient dialogue. Is that understood?’_

He had tried, at first, to do as he was told. Each evening filled with steady resolve but marred with dread, early bedtime and sleep exercises, desperately trying to fall asleep faster against his better judgement. But every time he dreamed he forgot how to speak. There never was any way for him to talk to the monsters, let alone understand them -they were on different pages of two very different books, one of which was almost definitely not a book of any sorts at all, but more of an idea in some language without letters. Eventually, Reginald had given up on the morning reports, tipped over the edge by one too many ‘I don’t remember’ s. The dreams persisted, but he made peace with not understanding, retreating to the corner of his mind that was left without pressure from the things in his sleep.

Discomfort also came in the rigmarole of sleep. The bells, the timed shower and sink time, the unified ‘lights out’. Unlike his siblings, sleep didn’t come easy to Ben. On most nights he couldn’t seem to fall asleep for hours, thoughts bouncing around in his head and toes itching to wiggle, the land of sleep seeming further away than Mars. Five once told him that sleep was a simple as staying in one place for fifteen minutes, but he couldn’t bear to lie still with all the thoughts swirling in his head.

When they turned nine Allison gave him a joke key ring, a little cow whose nostrils were bright LED lights when a button on its back was pressed. The button also triggered a ‘moo’ sound, almost obnoxiously loud, but if you pressed the button under a pillow, then kept your finger pressing down, you could use it as a torch to your heart’s content. Ben spent countless hours with that cow torch in his mouth, teeth pressing on the button so his hands were free to turn the pages of whatever book he had taken from the library. Nights weren’t so bad after that, with his Austen and Dickens leaving him tired to the point of instant sleep when he finally stopped reading. Sleeplessness was less of a plague than it was a nuisance, more of a morning problem that remedied itself within the first lesson of the day.

That was true, of course, except for _those_ days. The real training days. The missions, the individual sessions. The days when he didn’t control the monsters,instead letting go and pushing through. On those days, he felt too weak to do much of anything after, barely able to walk home, let alone have dinner. On those days he was helped up to the bathroom, usually by Luther (Klaus tried in spirit, but was a little too unsteady to bear any weight with any dignity. Vanya didn’t like the blood, and the others went to clean their own messes. Luther, for all his faults, thought of others first, always. Usually that person was Dad, but when Ben needed him, he was there). He would collapse into bed, reeking of the institution-grade soap bars their father somehow managed to find, and was out before his breath could find steady rhythm.

Above all, the deepest discomfort came with the act of sleeping itself. Number six liked to _be._ Liked reading, liked breathing in the stale city air, liked talking with his siblings, liked the way the house seemed to move with him as he walked its halls. There were so many things to do, so many _better_ things to do than simply training, and sleep robbed him of all of it. Once, when they were sixteen, Klaus and Allison managed to get their hands on the _Twilight_ book that had come out the year prior. Although the others scoffed and rolled their eyes, the book was well-thumbed by the time Ben snuck away with it, curious to see what the fuss was about. The romance stuff wasn’t really his area, but the vampires - solid, frozen, perfect immovable people - definitely were. The way that they could stay up all night, pursuing only their interests was some version of a fantasy Ben didn’t know he had. All that time at their fingertips, all the things he could _do_ with no limits, no exhaustion, nothing dragging him down.

The bit about watching Bella sleep was entirely creepy upon first and subsequent readings but now, forced into a similar state of sleeplessness, Ben thinks he gets it. There’s something so _alive_ about pure sleep. Something so - intimate. It’s not really about watching, it’s about being there. People are never so honest as when they sleep, when they dream. There’s no hiding, no posturing, no façade. Just people in their purest form.

Unlike the vampires, Ben cannot really do anything with all the time he has now. All he can do is watch, when Klaus isn’t there or isn’t able to manifest him. So nights are dedicated to watching, guarding the people he loved. He tries not to be creepy with it, leaving the bedrooms well alone until he can hear the soft snores and steady breathing of sleep. He definitely does not want to intrude on his siblings’ privacy. He’s had more than enough horrific experiences accidentally walking in on Klaus, and - yuck. No, thank you.

But everybody sleeps, and there isn’t much else to do with eternity at his fingertips, so he watches, and waits for sunrise. He sees everything; Luther’s snores, his bleary eyes when morning comes, Diego’s wanderings in the little hours, Allison’s late-night walks and cooking ventures, Klaus’s weird sleep-talking, Five’s restless sleep, his tossing and turning, Vanya’s peaceful muttering. He looks on, watches over. Keeps them safe, in his own way.

When one wakes before they should, panicked and scared, he’s there, even if they can’t see it. To have someone watching over you is comforting in itself (he thinks he read that in a card somewhere, perhaps one the family received after he left) and he likes to think he staves off the worst. Sometimes - and only sometimes, most often with Five, it’s like they see him, if only for a second, in the moment of waking. Eyes dart right to where he’s standing, with a flicker of recognition before they shut again. One blink, and he’s gone. It seems, to him at least, as though it makes it easier to shrug off the nightmare, to reach a kind of calm.

Once, at around 3am, only an hour or so after going to sleep, Allison woke up. She sat right up in her bed, and her eyes met his. He spoke, out of surprise more than anything, ‘Allison?’

‘Ben?’

One syllable, and he was frozen. Had she seen him? Heard him? How? Why now? Before he had a chance to form any more questions, let alone answer any, she had shaken her head and lain back down. After a moment, she was up again, getting out of bed and putting on her dressing gown. It wasn’t until she reached her bedroom door that she looked over again, but her gaze was unfocused, her eyes darting around like she couldn’t find something to land on. He was invisible again.

Perhaps sleep pushed people nearer the land of the dead. Perhaps, in that moment of waking, we are closer to the boundary between worlds than we think. Perhaps, perhaps. It didn't much matter anyway. For what else could he do? The burden of his cowardice, his choice not to go on, was this torturous isolation, this loneliness. The closest he could get to his siblings was this, as they slept, as they dreamed, most themselves and most in other worlds, just as he was. Perhaps it was a kind of curse, but these nights, now, as they sleep in their childhood rooms, as he wanders between the people he loved most, he thinks, perhaps there are worse things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ben! I feel like he would've been an Austen guy, rather than Brontë, and I have no facts to back that up. Next chapter is an actual interaction between hermanos, with actual dialog, so let's see how that goes! Woohoo! Should be updated next week, so keep an ear out! If there's anything you guys want to see, just let me know.


End file.
